About the Book

​Author: Annabelle Costa

Title: Harvard Hottie

Pages: 195

Genre: Woman's Fiction

Date Published: November 30, 2013

Format: ebook

Source: Amazon

Synopsis:​When nerdy, unhip Ellie Jenson meets rich, handsome Luke Thayer the Third as freshmen at Harvard University, it's Hate At First Sight. Ellie loathes Luke's smirk and superior attitude, and decides if she never sees him again, it will be too soon.

Fifteen years later, Ellie gets the surprise of her life: Luke is her new boss and owner of her company! But when Ellie discovers that Luke was paralyzed in an accident and is now in a wheelchair, she wonders if it's possible to be friends with this new, down-to-earth version of her former foe. Or maybe even more than friends, if Luke gets his way...

Links

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Goodreads

He holds up like three ties and asks me which one is best, but how the hell should I know?

I saw this book on a Goodreads list of disabled main characters while I was looking up things to read for this month's diversity challenge. I absolutely love stories that are loathing to love, because I'm a grown ass woman. So I figured I needed to read it. It also helped that it was free on Amazon.

So I started it. And the beginning amused me. Although it wasn't mutual loathing, sadly to say. But hey, one-sided is okay too. But as I went on things just continued to bother me.

Ellie is pretty much abusive... but she gets away with it because she's dating a guy in a wheelchair, and he's lucky to have her. At least, that's how it came across. She kept pointing out that he's "crippled" and saying things like "from the neck up, he’s still pretty gorgeous". Oh, and she basically emotionally manipulates him into having sex with her, even though he said no. She seriously pulled a, "have sex with me or we break up"line on him. So, as a character I think she's absolutely awful and disgusting. There's a whole lot more I can add, but that'd require too many spoilers.

Now, Luke... he starts out iffy. But he's supposed to. And the only reason this story isn't getting rated a 1 is because of his character development. He's been through a lot and has grown considerably because of this. Between his accident and his father, he's had a lot to overcome. And it's not hard to believe he ended up with a woman who would also be abusive. It's really sad but also realistic.

Every freaking time Ellie, or any other character, went on trying to say how she can't be with Luke because of his physical disability I cringed - hard. The things these people said. And I'm not saying it's not something that happens out in the real world... but it was hard to stomach. Replace handicapped with any other race or religion and have a character say those things in a book... and they come off as racist/prejudice. But ablest speech still isn't taken seriously. So I think this book was great at being an eye opener to me in that regard.

Out of every book I read for this month's challenge, this one was the only one that I didn't like. I don't recommend it and I won't be reading the other book by the same author that I also planned on reading for this challenge.